Cisco's a bit languid when he's an ounce heavy

I have the birds at the weights that I want them at this point. They both molted quickly with nice feathers coming in and the old one's dropping off fast all summer. But the last little bit is taking longer. I fed them a little bit light during the trip out here; the decrease in their input may have triggered something in their bodies. They're both doing fine. Farrah has not molted a single feather since we were in Houston. Cisco dropped a a few more on the trip. He actually got a little bit low on the trip out. Not dangerously, but lower than he's been in a pretty good while. He dropped a few feathers since early August when I left. Not surprising that he's lagging a Bay-winged Hawk in his molting speed. I'm deliberately keeping them about an ounce over hunting weight, but I'm feeding them everyday, which means something completely different from being an ounce over hunting weight on alternate days hunting season feedings, After every hunt, each bird gets a couple of days feeding. Flying them on the weekends goofs up that schedule just a little bit. Generally I shoot for 5 or 6 days a week but if somebody wants to go out on a weekend I nearly always will make the effort. 

This morning after flying Farrah in the yard, I took Cisco out to the Cibola Forest preserve. It doesn't look like a forest. I released Cisco and let him do what he wanted and wherever he was I stayed fairly near him and beat around the shrub trees that are there. Red-Tailed Hawks are a bit lazy by nature. When they're high in weight they are lazier than usual. We kicked up one giant blacktailed jackrabbit, he wandered off, and I yelled ho ho ho! Cisco did not pursue. That was about as exciting as it got. But my birds are getting exercise and they are keeping their weight just a little bit high to push the last of those feathers out and become hard pinned.